Weyr
11-08-2005, 05:02
Flashing lights at the ship's pointed prow pierced the bridge's forward crystal panes, reflecting off dull metallic bulkheads. The red-gold-green pattern danced in the pilot's eyes. His charge eased away from the docking ring, brief thruster burns leaving no mark on the pink battlestation's armor. He felt the familiar thrumm of fusactors beneath his feet spinning up. The station's spherical hull slowly walked off his field of vision. The freighter rotated; its long boom, lined with freight containers packed with broken-down bits to be sold for scrap, pointed on a course that would intercept Mars' orbit in several days.
"Control, Martian Runner, ready for departure."
When the shield was lowered, the pilot fed power to drives, trusting automated controls embedded in his ship's fusactor modules to regulate their power output. It was a system that had never failed. Tripple redundancy in cooling and shutdown systems warded against a catastrophic overloads. The design was so safe there had been only two unstoppable failures in three hundred years. But the system, like any other, had its faults. There were always weaknesses in Weyrik designs.
A hundred tons of super dense blocks shot from where the freighter was seconds before, riding a gravitic 'ripple'. They would intersect the station's meridian milliseconds later, propelled at a tenth of the speed of light, heralded by a brilliant flash, and gigatons of elementary particles. A simple bomb, but just as effective as anything against a military target.
A million point-defense emplacements had to be constantly maintained due to their sheer size. The probability of a single gatling developing problems was slim. Multiplied by a million, and the odds became significantly greater. Every two weeks a freighter would bring spare parts, and take away broken bits and pieces. The safety system was part of the ship's hardware; the hardware was perfectly changeable. For someone who wanted to make a statement, what could be easier than to be a maintenence worker able to add a few grams of moistware to each of the freighter's two fusactor control modules.
"Control, Martian Runner, ready for departure."
When the shield was lowered, the pilot fed power to drives, trusting automated controls embedded in his ship's fusactor modules to regulate their power output. It was a system that had never failed. Tripple redundancy in cooling and shutdown systems warded against a catastrophic overloads. The design was so safe there had been only two unstoppable failures in three hundred years. But the system, like any other, had its faults. There were always weaknesses in Weyrik designs.
A hundred tons of super dense blocks shot from where the freighter was seconds before, riding a gravitic 'ripple'. They would intersect the station's meridian milliseconds later, propelled at a tenth of the speed of light, heralded by a brilliant flash, and gigatons of elementary particles. A simple bomb, but just as effective as anything against a military target.
A million point-defense emplacements had to be constantly maintained due to their sheer size. The probability of a single gatling developing problems was slim. Multiplied by a million, and the odds became significantly greater. Every two weeks a freighter would bring spare parts, and take away broken bits and pieces. The safety system was part of the ship's hardware; the hardware was perfectly changeable. For someone who wanted to make a statement, what could be easier than to be a maintenence worker able to add a few grams of moistware to each of the freighter's two fusactor control modules.